This is my second year as an AP football voter and I’ve never had a week like this, in which seven of my top 11 teams lost (specifically, Nos. 3-5-6-7-8-10-11), as did three more ranked teams toward the bottom.
The top four were easy for me. I thought about moving FSU over Oregon for a second, but the Ducks have done nothing to deserve getting bumped down – their closest game was a 21-point win over Washington. Fortunately, Oregon’s next two games are UCLA and Stanford, so we’ll get a much better sense for where it stands against top competition.
The toughest choice was No. 5 – I put Stanford over undefeated Baylor, Missouri and Miami. Baylor still hasn’t played anyone, while Missouri appears to be passing tired horses and Miami, who I saw live on Thursday night, did not look great against North Carolina. Of course, I put them all in my top 8, which shows how crazy the week was.
Normally I wouldn’t drop a team from 3rd to 10th for losing against a top 5 team, but I did that with Clemson just because they were completely destroyed, and they didn’t look so great in previous weeks against Boston College and N.C. State, either. Even that win over Georgia – though it came when the Bulldogs were at full strength – doesn’t look as impressive now.
My final decision was with Louisville. Since it was a Friday night game, I was able to watch the Cardinals. I’m keeping them at 25 since I would still pick them to beat the teams hovering just outside my poll (including Michigan, Tennessee, Northern Illinois and Oklahoma State), but they were very close to falling from 7th to unranked.
Comments, criticisms, compliments (yeah, right). hgutmann@heraldsun.com or @haroldgut